Bullied American-Japanese girl forced to reinvent

Kelly Luce’s suspense novel “Pull Me Under” with a female protagonist that get more right about women, which tells the intriguing story of murder, rage, and explosive family secrets.  Chizuru Akitani, a Japanese overweight hafu (“ a half Person” or mixed race) – the daughter of an American white woman and Japanese father- is an obvious target for bullying at her Tokushima school in Japan. A month after her mother committed suicide, Chizuru stabs h3er tormentor to death with a letter opener, Thereafter she has been named as  Kireru, meaning a person who snaps like a wishbone,

Although her father is a world-famous violinist and “Living National Treasure”, she is detained in a juvenile recovery center for the next eight years. Subsequently, on her release, she learns that she is to renounce her Japanese citizenship and make a new life in the land of freedom America.

The novel really beings 25 years later in Colorado, where Chizuru has disappeared and in her place is Rio Silvestri, a 38-year-old dedicated nurse, wife and loving mother to 11-year-old Lily. As the Judge suspected split personality between her two selves “ no one in America knows about Chizuru, no one in Japan knows about Rio,” according to Chizuru. However, when the news of her estranged father’s death arrives, Rio decides to return to Japan for the funeral, a trip that could create an explosive atmosphere between her past and her present.

There is much nuanced psychologically rich consideration of the possibility of redemption.

Pull Me under give a sharp portrayal of how her (anti) heroine intrepidly holds it together.

Ignoring her Japanese, Rio has to remind herself about the interactions in this language are ruled by codes of behaviour and choosing the right words, a dance between honne (what you really think and feel) and Tatemae  ( the face you show to the world) is replicated in Luce’s double eccentric personalities.

Chizuru is both a victim – having clearly suffered cruelly at the hands of others and a perpetrator, as she clearly harbours a singular strength and the potential for violence.

Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce, Daunt £9.99/ Picador $18, 272 pages.